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SERMON 

OP TBE 

DANGERS WHICH THREATEN THE RIGHTS OE MAN 
IN AMERICA; 

PREACUED AT THE MUSIO HALL, 

ON SUNDAY, JULY 2, 1854, 



By THEODORE PARKER, 

Minister of the XXVIII. Congregational Society. 



[PHONOaEAPHIOALLT REPORTED BX MESSRS. TEEEINTON AND UIIGHTOK.] 



BOSTON: 
BENJAMIN B. MUSSEY & CO. 

1854. 



-4-33 



In Bixohangre 
Ooraell Uniir, 

2 Fob 0& 



boston: 

OF FKENTISS AND SAWYER, 
No. 19 Water Street. 



SERMON. 



And he gave tliein their request; biit sent leanness into their soul. — 
Psalm, cvi. : 15. 

Next Tuesday will be the seventy-eightli anniversary of 
American Independence. The day suggests a national subject 
as theme for meditation this morning. The condition of 
America makes it a dark and a sad meditation. I ask your 
attention, therefore, to a Sermon of the Dangers which 
threaten the E.ights of Man in America. 

The human race is permanent as the INIississippi, and like 
that is fed from springs wliich never diy ; but the several 
nations are as fleeting as its waves. In the great tide of 
humanity, States come up, one after the other, a wave or a 
bubble ; each lasts its moment, then dies — past off, forgot ; 

•' Or like the snow-falls in the river, 
A moment white — then melts forever," 

while the great stream of humanity rolls ever forward, from 
time to eternity : — not a wave needless ; not a snow-flake, 
no (h'op of rain or dew, no ephemeral bubble, but has its 
function to perform in that vast, unmeasured, never-ending 
stream. 

How powerless appears a single man ! He is one of a thou- 
sand milHon men ; the infinitesimal of a vulgar fraction ; one 



leaf on a particular tree in the forest. A single nation, like 
America, is a considerable part of mankind living "at the time ; 
but when compared with the human race of all time, past 
and to come, it seems as nothing ; it is but one bough in the 
woods. Nay, the population of the earth, to-day, is but 
one tree in the wide primeval forest of mankind, which 
covers the earth and outlasts the ages. The leaf may fall and 
not be missed from the bough; the branch may be rudely 
broken off, and its absence not marked ; the tree will die and 
be succeeded by other trees in the forest, green with summer 
beauty, or foodful and prophetic with autumnal seed. Tree 
by tree, the woods will pass away, and, unobserved, another 
forest take its place, arising, also, tree by tree. 

How various the duration of States or men — dying at 
birth, or lasting long periods of time ! For more than three 
thousand years, Egypt stood the queen of the world's young 
civilization, invincible as her own pyramids, which yet time and 
the nations alike .respect. From Eomulus, the first half-mytho- 
logic king of the seven-hilled city, to Augustulus, her last his- 
toric Emperor, it is more than twelve centuries. At this day, 
the Austrian, the Spanish, the French and German sovereigns 
sit each on a long-descended throne. Victoria is " daughter of 
a hundred kings." Pope Pius the Ninth claims two hundred 
and fifty-six predecessors, canonical and "infallible." His 
chair is reckoned more than eighteen hundred years old ; and 
it rests on an Etrurian platform yet ten centuries more ancient. 
The Turkish Thi-one has been firmly fixed at Constantinople 
for foiir hundred years. Individual tyrants, like summer 
files, are short-lived ; but tyranny is old and lasting. The 
family of ephemera, permanent amid the fleeting, is yet as 
old as that of elephants, and will last as long. 

Btit free governments have commonly been brief. If the 

Hebrew people had well nigh a thousand years of independent 

national Hfe, their Commonwealth lasted but about three 

centuries ; the flower of their literature and religion was but 

• little longer. The historic period of Greece begins 776 



B. C. ; her independence was all over in six hundred and 
thirty years. The Roman deluge had swallowed it up. No 
Deucahon and Pyrrha could re-people the land with Men. 
Her little States — how brief was their hour of Freedom for 
the people ! From the first annual archon of Athens to her 
conquest by Phillip, and the death of her Liberty, it was 
only two hundred and forty-five years ! Her tree of Freedom 
grew in a narrow field of time, and briefly bore its age- 
outlasting fruit of Science, Literature, and Ai't. Now the 
tree is dead ; its fragments are only curious Athenian stone. 
The Grecian colonies in the East, JiltoHan, Dorian, Ionian — 
how fair they blossomed in the despotic waste of Asia ! how 
soon those liberal blossoms died ! Even her colonies in the 
advancing West had no long independent life. Cyrene, 
Syracusa, Agrigentum, Crotona, Massiha, Saguntum, — how 
soon they died! — flowers which the savage winter swiftly 
nipped. 

The Rx)man Commonwealth could not endure five hundred 
years. Her theocratic Tarquin the Proud must be succeeded 
by a more despotic Dictator, with the style of Democrat ; 
and Rome, abhorring still the name of King, see all her 
liberties laid low. The red sea of despotism opened to let 
pass one noble troop — the Elder Brutus at the head, the 
Younger bringing up the rear, — then closed again and swal- 
lowed up that worse than J^gyptian host, clamoring only for 
*< bread and games " ! 

The RepubHcs of Italy in the INIiddle Ages were no more 
fortunate. The half-Grecian Commonwealths, Naples, Amal- 
phi, Gaeta, — what promise they once held forth; and what a 
warning fate! They were only born to die. A similar 
destiny befel the towns of more Northern Italy, where 
Freedom later found a home, — Milan, Padua, Genoa, Yai'ona, 
Venice, Bologna, Florence, Pisa. Nay, in the midnight of 
the dark ages, seven himdred years ago, in the very city of 
the Popes and Caesars, at the bottom of that red Roman sea 
of despotism, there was a momentary spot of dry free land ; 



6 



and Arnaido da Brescia eloquently spoke of " Eonian Liberty." 
The " llonian Republic " and " Eoman Senate " became once 
more familiar words. Italian Liberty, Lombard Republics, — 
how soon they all went down ! No city — not even Florence 
— rkept the people's freedom safe three hmiclred years. 
Silently the wealthy nobles and despotic priests sapped the 
walls. Party spirit blinded the else clear eyes : " the State 
may perish; let the faction thrive." The Republicans sought 
to crush the adjacent feeble States. They forgot Justice, the 
Higher Law of God : unworthy of Liberty, they fell and 
died ! Let the Tyrant swallow up the Italian towns ; they 
were unfit for Freedom. " A generous disdain of one man's 
will is to Republics what chastity is to woman ; " they spurned 
this austere virtue. Let them serve their- despots. " Liberty 
withdrew from a people who disgraced her name." Let 
Dante burn his poetic brand of infamy into the forehead of liis 
countrymen. But wliile Freedom lasted, how fair was her 
blossom, how rich and sweet her fruit ! What riches, what 
bea,uty, what Science, Letters, Art, came of that noble stock ! 
Italy was the world's wonder — for a day ; its sorrow ever 
since. So the cactus flowers into one gorgeous ecstacy of 
bloom ; then the excessive blossom, ^vith withering collapse, 
swoons and dies of its voluptuous and tropical delight. 

Liberty wanders from the North, though Italy the fairest of 
all eartlily lands ; then sits sadly down on the tallest of the 
Alps, and once more reviews these famous towns ; the jewels 
that adorn the purple robe of history — all tarnished, 
shattered, spoiled. Slowly she turns her face Northward 
and longs for hope. But even the Teutonic towns where 
Freedom ever wore a sober dress, were only spots of sunshine 
in a day of wintry storm. Swiss, German, Dutch, they were 
bi-ief as fair. In Novogorod and in Poland, how soon was 
Slavonian Freedom lost ! 

So in a winter day in the country, have I seen a little frame 
of glass, screening from the Northern snow and ice a nicely 
sheltered spot, where careful hands tended little delicate 



plants, for beauty and for use. How fair the winter garden 
seemed amid tlie wildering snow, and else all-conquering 
frost ! The little roses lifted up their face and kissed the 
glass that sheltered from the storm. But anon, some rude 
hand broke the frail barrier down, and in an horn- the plants 
were frozen, stiff and dead; and the little garden was all 
filled with snow and ice ; — a garden now no more ! 

How often do you see in a great city a man perish in his 
youth, bowed doA^oi by lusts of the body. The graves of 
such stand thick along the highway of our mortal life, — 
numberless, nameless, or all too conspicuously marked. Other 
men we see early bowed down by their ambition, and they 
live a life far worse than merely sensual death, — themselves 
the ghastliest monuments, beacons of ruin ! And so, along 
the laighway which mankind treads, there are the open sepul- 
chres of nations, which perished of their sin ; or else trans- 
formed to stone, the gloomy sphinxes sit there by the wayside 
— a hard, dread, awful lesson to the nations that pass by. 
Let America, 

" The Heir of all the ages ! and the youngest born of time ! " 

gather up every jewel which the prodigal scattered from his 
hand, look down into his grave, and then confront these 
gloomy, awful sphinxes, and learn what lessons of guidance 
they have ; or of warning, if it alone is to be found ! Even 
the sphinx has a riddle which we needs must learn, or else 
perish. 

The greater part of a nation's life is not delight ; it is dis- 
cipline. A great political philosopher, who has survived two 
revolutionary storms in France, has just now written, " God 
has made the condition of all men more severe than they are 
willing to believe. He causes them at all times to purchase 
the success of their labors and the progress of tlieir destiny 
at a dearer price than they had anticipated." 

The merchant knows how difficult it is to acquii'e a great 
estate ; the scholar, youthful and impatient, well understands 



tliat the way of science or of letters is steep and hard to 
climb ; the farmer knowing the stern climate of New England, 
her niggard soil, rises early and retires late, and is never off 
4 his guard. These men all thrive. But, alas, the people of 
America do not know on Avhat severe conditions alone national 
welfare is to be won. Human Nature is yet only a New 
England soil and climate for Freedom to grow in. 

Nations may come to an end tlii-ough the Decay of the 
/^ Family they 1 elong to ; and thus they may die out of old 
age, — for there is an infancy, manhood, and old age to a 
nation as well as to a man. Then the nation comes to a 
natural end, and like a shock of corn fully ripe, in its season 
it is gathered to its people. But I do not find that any State 
has thus lived out its destiny, and died a natural death. 

Again, States may perish by outward Violence, military 

y conquest, — for as the lion in the wilderness eateth up the 

wild ass, so the strong nations devour the weak. But tliis 

haj)pened most often in ancient times, when men and States 

were more rapacious even than now. 

Thirdly, States may perish through their own vice, moral 
or political. Their national institutions may be a defective 
machine which works badly, and fails of producing national 
welfare of body or spirit. It may not secure national unity of 
action — there is no national gravitation of the great masses, 
which fly asunder ; or it may fail of individual variety of 
action — there is no personal freedom ; excessive national 
gravitation destroys individual cohesion, and pulls the people 
flat ; the men are Slaves ; they cannot reach the moral and 
' spiritual welfare necessary for a nation's continuous life. In 
both these cases the vice is political ; the machinery is defec- 
tive, made after false ideas. Or when the institutions are 
y good and capable of accommodating the nation's increase and 
growth, the vice may be moral, lying deeper in the character 
of the peoj)le. They may have a false and unimprovable 
form of religion, which suits not the natm-e of man or of God, 



9 



xond which, consequently produces a false system of morals, 
and so corrupts the nation's heart. They may become selfish, 
gross, cowai-dly, atheistic, and so decay inwardly and perish. 
If left all alone such, a people will rot down and die of 
internal corruption. Mexico is in a perishing condition to- 
day ; so is Spain ; so are some of ttie young nations of South 
America, and some of the old of Asia and Europe. Notliing 
can ever save Turkey, — not all the arms of all the allied 
West ; and though Protestant and Catholic join hands, 
Christendom cannot propagate Mahometanism, nor keep it 
from going down. 

Leave these nations to their fate and they will die. But 
commonly, they are not left to themselves ; other people rush 
in and conquer. The wild individual man is rapacious by 
instinct. The present nations are rapacious also by calcu- 
lation ; they prey on feeble States. The hooded crow of 
Europe watches for the sickly sheep. In America, the wolves 
prowl around the herd of buffaloes and seize the sickly, the 
wounded, and the old. And so there are scavengers of the 
nations, — fillibusters, the flesh-flies and carrion-vultures of 
the world, who have also their function to perform. Wealth 
and power are never left wdthout occupants. Rome was cor- 
rupt, her institutions bad, her religion worn out, her morals 
desperate ; Northern nations came upon her. " Wheresoever 
the body is thither the eagles will be gathered together." 

In Eui'ope, there are nations in this state of decay, from 
moral or political vice. All the Italo^Greek populations, 
most of the Celto-Roman, all the Celtic, all the old Asiatic 
populations — the Hungarians and Tm-ks. The Teutonic 
and Slavic families alone seem to prosper, full of vigorous, 
new hfe, capable of making new improvements, to suit the 
altered phases of the world. 

In America, there is only one family in a state of advance, 

of hardy health. Spanish America is in a state of decay ; 

she has a bad form of rehgion, and bad morals ; her republics 

only " guarantee the right of assassination ; " an empire is her 

2 



10 



freest state. But in the North of North America the Anglo- 
Saxon British colonies rapidly advance in material and spirit- 
ual develojjment, and one day doubtless they will separate 
from the parent stem and become an independent tree. The 
roots of England run under the ocean ; they come up in 
Africa, India, Australia, America, in many an island of the 
seas. Great, fresh, living trunks grow up therefrom. One 
day these oiFshoots will become self-supporting, with new 
and independent roots, and ere long will separate from the 
parent stem ; then there will be a great Anglo-Saxon trunk 
in Australia, another in India, another iu Africa, another 
in the North of our ovm Continent, and yet others scattered 
over all the islands of the sea, an Anglo-Saxon forest of 
civilization. 

But in the centre of the North American Continent, the 
same Anglo-Saxons have passed from their first condition of 
scattered and dependent colonies, and become a united and 
independent nation, five-and-twenty millions strong. Our 
fellow-countrymen here in America compose one-fortieth part 
of all the inhabitants of the globe. We are now making the 
greatest political experiment wliich the sun ever looked do"WTi 
upon. 
' ' First, we are seeking to found a State on Industry, and not 
War. All the prizes of America are prizes of toil, not 
fighting. We are ruled by the constable, not by the soldier. 
It is only in exceptional cases, when the liberal institutions 
of America are to be trodden under foot, that the constable 
disappears, and the red arm of the soldier clutches at the 
people's throat. That is the first part of our scheme — we 
are aiming to found an Industrial State. 
*■ ) Next, the national Theory of the government is a Democ- 
racy — the government of all, by all, for all. All officers 
depend on election, none are fore-ordained. There are to be 
no special privileges, only natural, universal rights. 

It would be a fafr spectacle, — a great industrial Common- 
wealth, spread over half the continent, and folding in its 



11 



bosom one fortietli of God's whole family ! It is a fair 
di-eam ; nor Athenian Plato, nor English Thomas More, nor 
Bacon, nor Harrington ever dared write on paper so fair an 
ideal as our fathers and we have essayed to put into men. I 
once thought this dream of America would one day become 
a blessed fact ! We have many elements of national success. 
Our territory for quantity and quality is all we could ask ; 
our origin is of the Caucasian's best. No nation had ever 
so fair a beginning as we. The Anglo-Saxon is a good hardy 
stock for national welfare to grow on. To my American eye, 
it seems that Human Nature had never anything so good 
for popular liberty to be grafted into. We are already strong, 
and fear nothing from any foreign power. The \'iolent cannot 
take us by force. No nation is our enemy. 

But the question now comes. Is America to live or to die ? 
If we live, what life shall it be? Shall we fall into the 
sepulchre of departed States — a new debauchee of the 
nations ? Shall we live petrified to stone, a despotism many- 
headed, sitting — another sphinx — by the wayside of history, 
to scare young nations in their march and impede their 
progress ? Or shall we pursue the journey, — a great, noble- 
hearted Commonwealth, a nation possessing the continent, 
full of riches, full of justice, full of wisdom, full of piety, 
and full of peace? It depends on ourselves. It is for 
America, for this generation of Americans, to say which of 
the three shall happen. No fate holds us up. Our character 
is our destiny. 

I am not a timid man ; I am no excessive praiser of times 
passed by ; I seldom take counsel of my fears, often of my 
hopes ; — but now I must say that since '76 our success 
was never so doubtful as at tliis time. England is in peril ; 
the despots on the continent hate her free Parhament, Mdiich 
makes laws for the people — just laws ; they hate her free 
speech, which tells every grievance at home or abroad ,• they 
hate her fi-ee soil, winch offers a home to every exile, — 
repubHcan or despotic. England is in peril, for every tyi*ant 



n 



hates her. Russia is in danger, for the two strongest powers- 
of Cliristendom have just clasped hands, and sworn an oath 
to fight against that great marauding empii'e of the East. 
Their armies threaten her cities ; her sovereign deserts his 
capital ; her treasure is carried a thousand miles inward ; the 
Western fleets blockade her ports and sweep her navies from 
the sea. But Russia has no peril like ours ; England has no 
danger so great as that which threatens us this day. In the 
darkest periods of the American Revolution, when Wasliing- 
ton's army, without blankets, without coats, without shoes, 
fled through the Jerseys, when they marked the ice of the 
Delaware, and left Revolutionary tracks in frozen blood, we 
were not in such peril as to-day. When General Gage 
had the throat of Boston in his hand, and perfidiously dis- 
armed the people, we were not in such danger. Yea, when 
four-hundred houses in yonder town went up in one great 
cloud of smoke towards heaven, the liberties of America 
were not in such peril as they are to-day. Then we were 
called to fight with swords — and when that work was to 
be done, was America ever foxmd wanting ? Then our ad- 
versary was the other side of the sea, and wicked statutes 
were enacted against us in Westminster Hall. Now our 
enemy is at home ; and something far costlier than swords 
is to be called into service. 

Look at some of these dangers. I shall pass by all that 
are trifling. I find four great perils. Here they are : — 

y" I. There comes the Danger from our exclusive Devotion to 
Riches. 

II. The Danger from the Roman Catholic Church, estab- 
lished in the midst of us. 

III. The Danger from the Idea that there is no Higher 
Law above the Statutes which men make. 

IV. The Danger from the Institution of Slavery, which is 
-' based on that atheistic idea last named. 



13 



I. Of the Danger which comes from our Exclusive 
Devotion to Riches. 

Power is never left without a possessor : when it fell from 
the theocratic and military classes, from the priest, the noblo;, 
and the king, it passed to the hands of the capitaHst. In 
America, ecclesiastical office is not power ; noble or royal 
birth is of small value. If Madison or Jefferson had left 
any sons but Mulattoes, their distinguished birth would avail 
them nothing. The son of Patrick Hemy lived a strolling 
schoolmaster, and a pauper's funeral was asked for his body. 
Money is power ; the only permanent and transmissible power : 
it goes by device. Money " can ennoble sots and slaves and 
cowards." 

It gives rank in the Chiu'ch. The millionaire is always a 
saint. The priests of Commerce will think twice before 
damning a man who enliances their salary and gives them 
dinners. In one thing the American Heaven resembles 
the New Jerusalem: — its pavement is "of fine gold." The 
ca]Ditalist has the chief seat in our Christian synagogue. 
It is a rare minister who dares assail a vice which has riches 
on its side. Is there a clergyman at the South who speaks 
against the profitable wickedness wliich chains tln-ee million 
American men ? How few at the North ! 

In Society, money is genteel ; it is always respectable. The 
high places of society do not belong to ecclesiastical men, as 
in Rome ; to military men, as in St. Petersburg ; to men of 
famous family, as in England and Spain ; to men of Science 
and Literature, men of Geiiius, as in Berhn ; but to rich men. 

Money gives distinction in Literatiu'e, so far as the literary 
class can control the pubhc judgment. The colleges respect 
a rich man's son ; they name professorships after such as 
endow them with money, not mind. Critics respect a rich 
man's book ; if he has not brains, he has brass, which is 
better. The capitaHst is admitted a member of the Academies 



14 



of Arts and Sciences, of collegiate societies ; if lie cannot 
write dissertations, he can give suppers, and there must be a 
material basis for Science. At anniversaries, he receives the 
Honorary degree. " ' T is easier to weigh purses, sm-e, than 
brains." A dull scholar is expelled jQ.-oni college for idleness, 
and twenty years later returns to New England -with half a 
million of money, and gets his degree. As he puzzles at 
the Latin diploma, he asks, " If I had come home poor, I 
wonder how long it would have taken the ^ Alma Mater ' to 
find out that I was ever a ' good scholar,' and now * merited 
an honorary degree ' — facts which I never knew before ! " 

In politics, money has more influence than in Turkey, 
Austria, Russia, England, or Spain. For in our politics the 
interest of property is preferred before all others. National 
legislation almost invariably favors capital, and not the labor- 
ing hand. The Federalists feared that riches would not be 
safe in America — the many would plunder the wealthy few. 
It was a groundless fear. In an Industrial Commonwealth, 
pro]perty is sure of popular protection. Where all own 
hay-ricks no one scatters fii'e-brands. Nowhere in the world 
is property so secure or so much respected ; for it rests on a 
more natural basis than elsewhere. Nowhere is wealth so 
powerful in Church, Society, and State. In Kentucky and 
elsewhere, it can take the mui-derer's neck out of the halter. 
It can make the foolish wise ; the dull man, " eloquent " ; the 
mean man, " honorable, one of our most prominent citizens " ; 
the heretic, " sound orthodox " ; the ugly, fair ; the old man, 
a desirable young bridegroom. Nay, vice itself becomes 
virtue, and man-stealing is Chiistianity. 

Here, nothing but the voter's naked ballot holds money in 
check ; there are no great families with their liistoric tradition, 
as in all Europe ; no bodies of literary or scientific men to 
oppose theii- Genius to mere material Gold. The chui'ch is 
no barrier, only its servant, for when the minister depends on 
the wealth of his parish for support, you know the common 
consequence. Lying rides on Obligation's back. The minister 



15 



respects the hand that feeds him: "the ox knoweth liis 
owner, and the ass his master's crib." Yet now and then a 
minister looks starvation in the face and continues his unpop- 
ular ser\'ice of God. No pohtical institutions check the au- 
thority of wealth ; it can bribe and buy the venal ; the brave 
it sometimes can intimidate and starve. Money can often 
carry a Bill through the legislature — state or national. The 
majority is hardly strong enough to check this pecuniary sway. 

In the " most democratic " States, gold is most powerful. 
Thus, in fifteen States of America, three hundred thousand 
men own thii-teen hundred millions of money invested in 
men. In virtue thereof they control the legislation of their 
own States, making their institutions despotic, and not repub- 
lican ; they keep the poor white man from political power, 
from comfort, from the material means of education and 
religion ; they destroy his self respect, and leave liim notliing 
but his body ; from the poorest of the poor, they take away 
his body itself. Next they control the legislation of i\jnerica ; 
they make the President, they appoint the Supreme Court, 
they control the Senate, the Kepresentatives, they determine 
the domestic and foreign policy of the Nation. Fmally, they 
affect the laws of all the other sixteen States — the Southern 
hand coloring the local institutions of New Haven and 
Boston. 

That is only one example — one of many. Russia is gov- 
erned by a long-descended Czar ; England by a Queen, 
Nobles, and Gentry, — men of ancient family, with culture 
and riches. America is ruled by a troop of men with nothing 
but money and what it brings : — tlu-ee hundred thousand 
slaveholders and their servants. North and South. Boston is 
under their thumb ; at their command the JNIayor spits in 
the face of Massachusetts law, and plants a thousand bay- 
onets at the people's throat. They make cartridges under the 
eaves of Faneuil Hall. 

Accordingly, money is the great object of desu'e and piu'suit. 
There are material reasons why this is so in many lands : — in 



16 



America there are also social, political, and ecclesiastical reasons 
for it. " To be' rich is to be blessed : Poverty is damnation :" 
that is the popular creed. 

The public looks superficially at the immediate effect of 
tills opinion, at this exceeding and exclusive desire for riches ; 
they see its effect on Israel and John Jacob, on Stephen, Peter, 
and Eobert : it makes them rich, and their childi-en respectable 
and famous. Pew ask. What effect will this have on the 
nation ? They foresee not the future evil it threatens. Nay, 
they do not consider how it debauches the institutions of 
America — ecclesiastical, academic, social, political; how it 
corrupts the hearts of the people, making them prize money 
as the end of life, and manhood as only the means thereto, 
making money master, and human nature its tool or servant, 
but no more. 

The political effect of this unnatm-al esteem for riches is 
not at all well understood. History but too plainly tells of 
the dangerous power of priests or nobles consolidated into a 
class, and theu- united forces dii'ected by a single able head. 
The power of allied kings, concentrating whole realms of men 
and money on a single point ; the effect of armies and navies 
collected together and marshalled by a single wall ; is all too 
boldly written in the ruin of many a State. We have often 
been warned against the peril from forts, and castles, and 
standing armies. But the power of consolidated riches, the 
peril which accumulated property may bring upon the liberties 
of an industrial Commonwealth, though formidably near, as 
yet is all unknown, all unconsidered too. Ah'eady the con- 
solidated property of one eightieth part of the population 
controls all the rest. 

Two special causes, both exceptional and fleeting, just 
now stimulate the acquisitiveness of America almost to mad- 
ness. 

One is the rapid development of the art of manufacturing 
the raw materials gathered from the bosom or the surface of 
the earth. The invention of printing made education and 



17 



freedom possible on a large scale ; one of tlie immediate results 
thereof is this — the head briefly performs the else long pro- 
tracted labor of the hand. "Wind, water, fire, steam, light- 
ning, have become pliant forces to manufacture wood, flax, 
cotton, wool, and all the metals. Tliis result is nowhere so 
noticeable as in New England, where education is almost 
universal. The New England school-house is the macliine- 
shop of America. What the State invests in slates and 
teachers pays dividends in hard coin. This new power over the 
material world, the first and unexpected commercial result of 
the public education of the people, gives a great and perhaps 
lasting stimulus to the pursuit of wealth. It aflfects the most 
uneducated portions of the world, — for the educated man 
leaves much rough labor for the ignorant, and enhances the 
demand for the results of their toil. The tliinking head raises 
, the wages of all mere hands. Hence arises the increased 
value of Slaves at the South, and the rapid immigration of 
the most ignorant Irishmen to the North. They are to the 
thoughtful projector what the INIerrimack is to the cotton- 
spinner — a rude force pliant before his will. Dr. Faustus 
is the unconscious pioneer of many a pilgrimage. 

The other cause is the discovery of gold in California and 
then in Australia. This doubles or trebles the pecuniary 
momentum of America. Its stimulating influence on Ameri- 
can covetousness, accumulation, and luxury is obvious. What 
further and ultimate effects it will produce I shall not now 
pause to inquire. When a whirlwind rises all men can see 
that dust is mounting to the sky. 

Besides, the form of American industry is changed. Once, 
New England and all the North were chiefly agricultural ; 
manufactures and commerce were conducted on a small scale ; 
and therein each man wrought on his own account. There 
was a great deal of individual activity, individuality of char- 
acter. Few men worked for wages. Now, New England is 
mainly manufacturing and commercial. Vermont is the only 
farming State. Mechanics, men and women, work for wages ; 
3 



18 

many in the employment of a single man ; tlioiisands in the 
pay of one company, organized by superior ability. The 
workman loses liis independence, and is' not only paid but 
governed also by liis employer's money. His opinions and 
character are formed after the prescribed pattern by the mill 
he works in. The old military organizations for defence 
or aggression brought freedom of body distmctly in peril; 
the new industrial organizations jeopardize freedom of mind 
and conscience: all New England is a monumental proof 
thereof. 

Another change also follows : the military habits of the 
North are all gone. Once, New England had more firelocks 
than householders ; every man was a soldier and marksman. 
Now, the people have lost their taste for mihta'ry discipline, 
and neither keep nor bear arms. Of course a few holiday 
soldiers, called out by a doctor and commanded by an apoth- 
ecary, can overawe the town. 

The Northern, and especially the Eastern and Middle 
States, are the great centre of this industrial development. 
Here, and especially in New England, the desire of riches 
has become so powerful that a very large proportion of our 
men of the greatest practical intellect have almost exclusively 
turned their attention to purely productive business, to com- 
merce and manufactures. They rarely engage in the work of 
politics — unprofitable to the individual, and at first sight 
merely preservative and defensive to the community. This 
they shun or neglect, as the mass of men avoid military disci- 
pline. 

The statutes must be made and administered by politi- 
cians. Here they are not able men. Of the forty-one New 
England delegates in Congress, of the six governors, of the 
many other professional leaders in politics, how many first- 
rate men are there? how many middle-sized second-rate 
men ? The control of the national affairs passes out of the 
fingers of the North — which has yet three-fifths of the pop- 
ulation, and more than four-fifths of the speculative and 



19 



practical intelligence and material -svealth. The Nation, con- 
trolled by the South, whose ablest men almost exckisively 
attend to politics. Besides, the State politics of the North 
fall into the hands of men quite inadequate to such a weighty 
trust. This mistake is as fatal as it would be in time of war 
to send all the able-bodied men to the plough, and the women 
and children to the camp. We are mis-managed at home 
and dishonorably routed in the Federal Capital. In the 
present state of the world, I think no nation would be justi- 
fied in turning non-resistant, tearing down its forts, disband- 
ing its armies, melting up its guns and swords / and I am 
sure the North suffers sadly from devoting so large a part 
of its masterly practical men to the productive work of com- 
merce and manufactui-es. Her politicians are not strong 
enough for her own defence. In American politics, the great 
battle of Ideas and Principles, yea of measures, is to be 
fought. Shall we keep our Washingtons surveying land ? 

The national effect of this estimate and accumulation of 
riches is to produce a great and rapid development of the 
practical understanding ; a great love for vulgar finery which 
pleases the palate or the eye ; great luxury of dress, orna- 
ment, fiu-niture. You see this in the hotels and public 
carriages on land and sea, in the costume of the nation, at 
public and private tables. Along with this there comes a 
certain refinement of the public taste. 

But there is no proportionate culture of the higher intel- 
lectual faculties — of the Eeason and Imagination ; still less 
of yet nobler powers — moral, affectional, and religious. 
From the common school to the college, the chief things 
taught are Arithmetic and Elocution; not the art to reason 
and create, but the trade to calculate and express. Every- 
thing is measured by the money standard. " The protection 
of property is the great object of government." The politi- 
cian must suit the pecuniary interest of his constituency, 
though at the cost of Justice ; the writer, author, or editor, 
the pecuniaiy interest of his readers, though at the sacrifice 



go 



of Truth ; the minister, the pecuniary interest of his audience^ 
though Piety and Morality both come to the groimd : Mam- 
mon is a profitable god to worship — he gives dinners. 

I think it must be confessed in the last eighty years the 
general moral and religious tone of the people in the free 
States has improved. This change comes from the natural 
forward tendency of mankind, the instinct of development, 
quickened hj our free institutions. But at the same time it 
is quite plain to me that the moral and religious tone of 
American politicians, writers, and preachers, has proportion- 
ately and absolutely gone down. You see this in the great 
towns : if Boston were once the " Athens of America," she 
is now only the " Corinth." Athens has retreated to some 
inland Salamis. 

But, in general, this peril from the excessive pursuit of 
riches comes unavoidably from our position in time and 
space, and our consequent political institutions. It belongs 
to the period of transition from the old form of vicarious rule 
by theocratic, military, and aristocratic governments, to the 
personal administration of an industrial Commonwealth. I 
do not much fear this peril, nor apprehend lasting evil from 
it. One of the great things which mankind now most needs 
is. Power over the material world as the basis for the liigher 
development of our Spiritual faculties. Wealth is indispen- 
sable ; it is the material pidp around the Spiritual seed. No 
nation was ever too rich, too well fed, clad, housed, and com- 
forted. The human race still suffers from poverty, the great 
obstacle to our progress. Doubtless we shall make many 
errors in our national attempt to organize the productive forces 
into an industrial State, as our fathers, — thousands of years 
ago, — in organizing their destructive powers into a military 
state. Once, man cut his fingers with iron, so now with gold. 
All Christendom shares this peril, though America feels it 
most. She is now like a thriving man, who gets rich fast, 
and thinks more than he ought of his money, and less of his 
manhood. Some misfortune, the ruin of a prodigal son per- 



21 



isliing in quicksands of gold, will by and by convince him 
that riches is not the only thing in life. 

II. Or THE Danger which comes from the Soman 
Catholic Church. 

The Roman Catholic Church claims infalhbility for itself, 
and denies Spii'itual Freedom, Liberty of Mind or Conscience 
to its members. It is therefore the foe to all progress ; it is 
deadly hostile to Democracy. To mankind this is its first 
command — Submit to an external authority; subordinate 
your human nature to an element foreign and abhorrent 
thereto ! It aims at absolute domination over the body and 
the spirit of man. The Catholic Church can never escape 
from the consequences of her first principle. She is the nat- 
ural ally of tp-ants, and the irreconcilable enemy of Freedom. 
Individual Catholics in America, as elsewhere, are inconsistent, 
and favor the progress of mankind. Alas ! such are excep- 
tional ; the Catholic Church has an iron logic, and consistently 
hates Liberty in all its forms — free thought, free speech. 

I quote the words of her own authors in America, recently 
uttered by the press. " Protestantism . . . has not and never 
can have any rights where Catholicity is triumphant." "We 
lose all the breath we expend in declaiming against bigotry 
and intolerance, and in favor of religious hberty." "Eeli- 
gious liberty [in America] is merely endured until the opposite 
can be carried into execution without peril to the Catholic 
world." "Catholicity will one day rule in America, and 
then religious liberty is at an end." " The very name of 

Liberty ought to be banished from the very domain of 

religion." " No man has a right to choose his religion.'* 
" Catholicism is the most intolerant of creeds. It is intol- 
erance itself, for it is the truth itself." * 

* The above, and many more similar declarations, may be found in a 
little pamphlet — "Familiar Letters to John B. Fitzpatrick, the Catholio 
Bishop of Boston, by an Independent Irishman." Boston, 1854. 



22 



The Catholic population is not great in numbers. In 1853, 
there were in America 1713 churches, 1574 priests,' 396 
theological stuelents, 32 bishops, 7 archbishops, church prop- 
erty worth about $10,000,000, and 1,728,000 Catholics. 
But most of them are of the Celtic stock, AA^aich has never 
much favored Protestantism or individual liberty in religion ; 
and in this respect is widely distinguished from the Teutonic 
population, who have the strongest ethnological instinct for 
personal freedom. 

Besides, the Catholics are governed with absolute rigor by 
their clergy, who are celibate priests, a social caste by them- 
selves, not sympathising with mankind, but emasculated of 
the natural humanities of our race. There are exceptional 
men amongst them, but such seems to be the rule with the 
class of Catholic priests in America. They are united into 
one compact body, with complete corporate unity of action, 
and ruled despotically by their bishops, archbishops, and 
Pope. The Catholic worshipper is not to tliink, but to 
believe and obey ; the priest not to reason and consider, but 
to proclaim and command ; the voter is not to inquire and 
examine, but to deposit his ballot as the ecclesiastical author- 
ity directs. The better religious orders do not Aasit America. 
The Jesuits, the most subtle enemies of humanity, come in 
abundance ; some are known, others stealthily prowl about 
the land, all the more dangerous for their disguise. They all 
act under the direction of a single head. One shrcAvd 
Protestant minister may be equal to one Jesuit, but no ten 
or forty Protestant ministers is a match for a combination 
of ten Jesuits, bred to the business of deception, knowing 
no allegiance to Truth or Justice, consciously disregarding 
the Higher Law of God, with the notorious maxim that " the 
end justifies the means," bound to their order by the most 
stringent oath, and devoted to the worst purposes of the 
Catholic Church. 

All these priests owe allegiance to a foreign head. It is 
not an American Church ; it is Koman, not free, individual. 



23 



but despotic ; nay, in its designs not so mucli human as 
merely papal. 

The Catholic Church opposes eveiything which favors 
Democracy and the natural rights of man. It hates our fi-ee 
churchesj, free press, and above all our free schools. No owl 
more shuns the light. It hates the rule of majorities, the 
voice of the people ; it loves violence, force, and blood. 

The Catholic clergy are on the side of Slavery. They find 
it is the dominant power, and pay coiu't thereto that they 
may rise by its help. They like Slavery itself ; it is an insti- 
tution thoroughly congenial to them, consistent with the first 
princijjles of their church. Their Jesuit leaders think it is 
" an ulcer which will eat up the Republic," and so foster it 
for the ruin of Democracy, the deadliest foe of the Eoman 
hierarchy. 

Besides, most of the Catholics are the victims of oppression, 
poor, ilhterate, oppressed, and often vicious. Their circum- 
stances have ground the humanity out of them. No sect fur- 
nishes half so many criminals — victims of society before they 
become its foes j no sect has so little philanthropy, none is'SO 
greedy to oppress. All this is natural. The lower you go 
down the coarser and more cruel do you find the human 
being. 

I am told there is not in all America a single Catholic 
newsj)aper hostile to Slavery ; not one opposed to tyranny in 
general ; not one that takes sides with the oppressed in 
Eui'ope. There is not in America a man born and bred in 
the Catholic Church, who is eminent for Philosoj)hy, Science, 
Literature, or Art ; none distinguished for Philanthropy ! 
The water tastes of the fountain. 

Catholic votes are in the market ; the bishops can dispose 
of them — politicians will make their bid. Shall it be the 
sacrifice of the free schools ? of other noble institutions ? In 
some States it seems not unlikely. 

I do not think our leading men see all this danger. But 
the baneful influence of the Church of the Dark Ages begins 



24 

to show itself in the press, in the schools, and still more in 
the politics of America. Yet I am glad the Catholics come 
here. Let America be an asylum for the poor and the down- 
trodden of all lands ; let the Irish ships, reeking with misery, 
land their human burthens in our harbors. The continent is 
wide enough for all. I rejoice that in America there is no 
national form of religion ; — let the Jew, the Chinese Budd- 
hist, the savage Indian, the Mormon, the Protestant, and the 
Catholic have free opportunity to be faithful each to his own 
conscience. Let the American Catholic have his bishops, his 
archbishops, and his Pope, his Jesuits, his convents, his 
nunneries, his celibate priesthood of hard drinkers, if he will. 
Let him oppose the public education of the people ; oppose 
the press, the meeting-house, and the ballot-box ; nay, oppose 
temperance and rehgion if he likes. If, with Truth and 
Justice on our side, the few Catholics can overcome the many 
Protestants, we deserve defeat. We should be false to the 
first principles of our democratic theory, if we did not grant 
them their unaHenable rights. Let there be no tyranny ; let 
us pay the Catholics good for ill; and cast out Satan by the 
finger of God, not by the Prince of Devils. This peril is 
easily mastered. The Catholic Church has still many lessons 
to offer the Protestants. 

III. Of the Danger from the Idea that there is 
NO Higher Law above the Statutes of Men. 

Of late years, it has been industriously taught in America 
' that there is no Law of Nature superior to the Statutes wliich 
men enact ; that Politics are not amenable to Conscience or to 
God. Accordingly, the American Congress knows no check in 
legislation but the Constitution of the United States and the 
will of the majority ; none in the Constitution of the Universe 
and the Will of God. The atheistic idea of the Jesuits, that 
the End justifies the Means, is made the first principle in 
American politics. Hence it has been repeatedly declared 



25 



by " prominent clergymen " that politics sliould not be treated 
in the j)ulpit ; they are not amenable to religion ; Christianity 
has nothing to do with making or administering the laws. 
When the Pharisees and Saddncecs have silenced the Prophet 
and the Apostle, it is not difficult to make men believe that 
Macchiavelli is a great saint, and Jesuitism the revealed 
religion of politics ! Let the legislators make what wicked 
laws they will against the Rights of Man ; the priest of com- 
merce is to say nothing. Nay, the legislators themselves are 
never to refer to Justice and the Eternal Eight, only to the 
exj^ediency of the hour. 

Then when the Statute is made, the magistrate is not to 
ask if it be just, he is only to execute it ; the people are to 
obey and help enforce the wicked enactment, never asking if 
it be right. The highest virtue in the people is — unques- 
tioning submission to the Constitution ; or, when the Statute 
violates their conscience, to do " a disagreeable duty " ! Thus 
the political action of the people is exempted from the juris- 
diction of God and his natural moral law ! Christianity has 
nothing to do with politics ! 

Within a few years this doctrine has been taught in a great 
variety of forms. At first it came in with evil laws, simply as 
the occasional supjjort of a measure ; at length it is announced 
as a Principle. It has taken a deep hold on the educated 
classes of the community ; for our " superior education " is 
almost wholly of the intellect, and of only its humbler 
powers. It appears among the lawyers, the politicians, the 
editors, and the clergy. Some deny the natural distinction 
between right and wrong. " Justice " is a matter of conven- 
tion ; things are not " true," but " agreed upon " ; not 
'' right," only "assented to." There is no "moral obliga- 
tion." Government rests on a compact, having its ultimate 
foundation on the caprice of men, not in their moral nature. 
What are called Natural Rights are only certain conveniences 
agreed upon amongst men ; legal fictions — their recognition 
is their essence, they are the creatures of a compact. Prop- 
4' 



26 



erty has no foundation in the nature of things ; it may consist 
of whatever the legislature determines — land, cattle, food, 
clothing ; or of men, Avomen, and children. Dives may own 
Lazarus as well as the dogs who serve him at the gate. 
There is no political morality, only political economy. 

This conclusion arises from the philosophy of Hobbes and 
Filmer ; yes, from the first principles of Locke and Rousseau. 
It is one of the worst results of materialism and practical 
atheism. It takes different forms in different nations. In a 
monarchy it has for its axiom, " The King c^an do no wrong ; 
he is the Norm of law. Vox Regis vox Dei " ; in a Democ- 
racy, The majority can do no wrong ; they are the Norm of 
Law — Vox Pojpuli vox Dei." So the Statute becomes an 
idol ; loyalty takes the place of Religion, and despotism 
becomes enthroned on the necks of the people. 

It is not surprising that this doctrine should be taught 
from the pulpit in Catholic countries — it is conformable to 
the general conduct of the Roman Church. It belongs also 
with the sensational philosophy which has done so much to 
break to pieces the theology of the Dark Ages ; — and does 
not astonish one in the sects which build thereon. But at 
first sight it seems amazing that American Christians of the 
Puritanic stock, with a philosophy wliich transcends sensa- 
tionalism, should prove false to the only principle which at 
once justifies the conduct of Jesus, of Luther, and the Pm-i- 
tans themselves. For certainly if obedience to the established 
law be the highest virtue, then the Patriots and Pilgrims of 
New England, the Reformers of the Church, the glorious 
company of the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the 
Prophets, and the noble army of martyrs, nay, Jesus liim- 
self, were only criminals and traitors. To appreciate this 
denial of the first principle of all religion, it would be neces- 
sary to go deep into the theology of Chiistendom, and touch 
the fatal error of all the three parties just referred to. For 
that there is now no time. 
y One of the consequences of this atheistic denial of the 



27 



natural foundation of human laws is, the Preponderance of 
Parties, An opinion before it becomes a law, Avhile it is yet 
a tendency, becomes organized into a faction, or party. 
JNIembers of the party feel the same loyalty thereto which ^ 
narrow patriots feel for their nation, or bigots for their sect ; 
they give up their mind and conscience to their party. So 
fidelity to their party, right or wrong, is deemed a great 
political virtue ; the individual member is bound by the party 
opinion. Thus is the jjrivate conscience still further debauched ^ 
by the second act in this atheistic popular tragedy. 

Thus both national and party politics are taken out of the 
jurisdiction of morals, declared not amenable to conscience : 
in other words, are left to the control of political Jesuits. 
An American may read the natural result of such principles 
in the downfall of the Grecian and Italian Republics, or Avait 
to behold it in his own land. 

IV. Of the Dangers from the Institution of 
Slavery which rests on this False Idea. 

Slavery is the child of Violence and Atheism. Brute 
material force — that is its father : the atheistic idea that there 
is no Law of God above the passions of men — that is the 
mother of it. I have lately spoken so long, so often, and ^ 
with such publicity, both of speech and print, respecting the 
extent of Slavery in America, and its constant advance since 
1788, that I shall pass over all that theme, and speak more 
dii-ectly of the present danger it brings upon our Freedom. 

There can be no national welfare without national Unity of 
Action. That cannot take place unless there is national 
Unity of Idea in fundamentals. Without that a nation is a 
*' house divided against itself"; of coui'se it cannot stand. 
It is what mechanics call a figure without equihbrium ; the 
different parts of it do not balance. 

Now, in the American State there are two distinct ideas — • 
Freedom and Slavery, 



28 

Tlie Idea of Freedom first got a national expression seventy- 
eight years ago next Tuesday. Here it is. I put it in a 
philosophic form. There are five points to it. 

First, All men are endowed by their Creator with certain 
natural rights, amongst which is the right to life, liberty, and 
the pursiiit of happiness. 

Second, These rights are unalienable ; they can be ahenated 
only by the possessor tliereof; the fother cannot alienate 
them for the son, nor the son for the father ; ncr the husband 
for the wife, nor the wife for .the husband ; nor the strong for 
the weak, nor the weak for the strong ; nor the few for the 
many, nor the many for the few ; and so on. 

Third, In respect to these all men are equal ; the rich 
man has not more, and the poor less ; the strong man has not 
more, and the Aveak man less : — all are exactly equal in 
these rights, however unequal in their powers. 

Fourth, It is the function of government to secure these 
natural, unalienable, and equal rights to every man. 

Fifth, Government derives all its divine right from its 
conformity with these ideas, all its human sanction from the 
consent of the governed. 

That is the Idea of Freedom. I used to call it "the 
American Idea " ; it was when I was younger than I am to- 
day. It is derived from human nature ; it rests on the 
immutable Laws of God ; it is part of the natural religion of 
mankind. It demands a govei-nment after natural Justice, 
which is the point common between the conscience of God and 
the conscience of mankind ; it is the point common also 
between the interests of one man and of all men. 

Now this government, just in its substance, in its form 
must be democratic : that is to say, the government of all, by 
all, and for all. You see what consequences must follow 
from such an idea, and the attempt to re-enact the Law of 
God into jjolitical institutions. There will follow the freedom 
of the people, respect for every natiu-al right of all men, the 
rights of their body and of their spirit — the rights of mind 



and conscience, heart and sonl. There mnst be some restraint 
- — as of chikhen by their parents, as of bad men by good 
men ; but it will be restraint for the joint good of all parties 
concerned ; not restraint for the exclusive benefit of the 
restrainer. The ultimate consequence of tliis will be the 
material and spiritual welfare of all — riches, comfort, noble 
manhood, all desirable tilings. 

That is the Idea of Freedom. It appears in the Declaration 
of Independence ; it re-appears in the Preamble to the 
American Constitution, which aims "to establish Justice, 
ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, 
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of Lib- 
erty." That is a religious idea ; and when men pray for the 
"Reign of Justice" and the "Kingdom of Heaven" to 
come on earth politically, I suppose they mean that there 
may be a Commonwealth where every man has liis natural 
rights of mind, body, and estate. 

Next is the Idea of Slavery. Here it is. I put it also in 
' a philosophic form. There are three points which I make. 

First, Thei-e are no natural, unalienable, and equal rights, 
wherewith men are endowed by their Creator ; no natiu-al, 
unalienable, and equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness. 

Second, There is a great diversity of powers, and in virtue 
thereof the strong man may rule and oppress, enslave and 
ruin the weak, for his interest and against theirs. 

Third, There is no natural law of God to forbid the strong 
to oppress the weak, and enslave and ruin the weak. 

That is the Idea of Slavery. It has never got a national 
^ expression in America ; it has never been laid down as a 
Principle in any act of the American people, nor in any single 
State, so far as I know. All profess the opposite ; but it is 
involved in the measures of both State and Nation. This 
Idea is founded in the selfishness of man ; it is atheistic. 
'^ The idea must lead to a corresponding government ; that will 



30 



be unjiist in its substance, — for it will depend not on natural 
right, but on personal force ; not on the Constitution of the 
Universe, but on the compact of men. It is the abnegation 
of God in the universe and of conscience in man. Its form 
will be despotism, — the government of all, by a part, for the 
sake of a part. It may be a single-headed despotism, or a 
despotism of many heads ; but whether a Cyclops or a Hydra, 
it is alike " the abomination which maketh desolate." Its 
ultimate consequence is plain to foresee — poverty to a nation, 
misery, ruin. At first. Slavery came as a Measure ; nothing 
was said about it as a Principle. But in a country full of 
schoolmasters, newspapers, legislatures, talking men, — a 
measure without a principle to bear it up is like a single twig 
of willow" cast out on a wooden floor ; there is notliing for it 
to grow by ; it will die. So of late the principle has been 
boldly avoM-ed. Mr. Calhoun denied the self-evident truths 
of the Declaration of Independence ; denied the natural, 
unalienable, and equal rights of man. Many since have done 
the same — political, literary, and mercantile men, and, of 
course, ecclesiastical men ; there are enough of them always 
in the market. All parts of the Idea of Slavery have been 
affirmed by prominent men at the North and the South. It 
has been acted on in the formation of the Constitution of 
every Slave State, and in the passage of many of its laws. It 
lies at the basis of a great deal of national legislation. 

Hear the opinions of some of oiu- Southern Patriots : — ■ 
"Slavery is coeval with Society:" "it was commended by 
God's chosen Theocracy, and sanctioned by His Apostles in 
the Christian Church." All ancient literature "is the litera- 
ture of Slaveholders ; " " Pome and Greece owed their lit- 
erary and national greatness exclusively to the institution of 
Slavery ; " " Slavery is as necessary for the welfare of the 
Southern States as sunshine is for the flowers of the prairies ; " 
"a noble and necessary institution of God's creation."* 

* Richmond Examiner, for June 30, 1854. 



31 



" Nature is the motlior and protector of Slavery ; " " Domestic 
vSlavery is not only natural and necessary, but a great blessing." 
" Free Society is a sad and signal failure ; " it " does well 
enough in a new country." " Free Society has become 
diseased by abolishing Slavery. It can only be restored to 
pristine health, happiness, and prosperity, by re-instituting 
Slavery." " Slavery may be administered under a new 
name." "Free Society is a monstrosity. Like all monsters, 
it Avill be short-lived. We dare and do vindicate Slavery in 
the abstract." The negro "needs a master to protect and 
govern him ; so do the ignorant poor in old countries."* 

" There is no moral wrong in Slavery ; " it " is the normal 
condition of human society." " The benefits and advantages 
which so far have resulted from this institution we take as 
lights to guide us to the brighter truths of its future history." 
" We belong to that society of which Slavery is the distin- 
guishing element, and we are not ashamed of it. We find it 
marked by every evidence of divine aj^proval." f 

These two Ideas are now fairly on foot. They are hostile ; '' 
they are both mutually invasive and destructive. They are 
in exact opposition to each other, and the nation which em- . 
bodies these two is not a figure of equilibrium. As both are 
active forces in the minds of men, and as each idea tends to 
become a fact — a universal and exclusive fact, — as men with 
these ideas organize into parties as a means to make their 
idea into a fact, — it follows that there must not only be strife 
amongst philosophical men about these antagonistic Principles 
and Ideas, but a strife of practical men about corresponding 
Facts and Measures. So the quarrel, if not otherwise ended, 
will pass from words to what seems more serious ; and one 
will overcome the other. 

So long as these two Ideas exist in the nation as two polit- 
ical forces, there is no national unity of Idea, of course no ., 

* Ibid, June 23, 1854. t Charleston Standard, (S. C.) June 21, 1854. 



/ 



unity of action. For there is no centre of gravity common to 
Freedom and Slavery. They will not compose an equilibrious 
figure. You may cry " Peace ! Peace ! " but so long as these 
two antagonistic Ideas remain, each seeking to organize itself 
and get exclusive power, there is no peace ; there can be none. 
The question before the nation to-day is, AVhich shall 
prevail — the Idea and Fact of Freedom, or the Idea and the 
Fact of Slavery ; Freedom, exclusive and universal, or Slavery, 
exclusive and universal ? The question is not merely. Shall 
the African be bond or free ? but. Shall America be a De- 
mocracy or a Despotism ? For nothing is so remorseless as 
an idea, and no logic is so strong as the historical development 
of a national idea by millions of men. A measure is nothing 
without its Principle. The Idea which allows Slavery in 
South Carolina will establish it also in New England. The 
bondage of a black man in Alexandria imperils every white 
woman's daughter in Boston. You cannot escape the conse- 
quences of a first Principle more than you can " take the leap 
of Niagara and stop when half-way down." The Principle 
which recognizes Slavery in the Constitution of the United 
States wovdd make all America a Despotism, wliile the Prin- 
ciple which made John Quincy Adams a free man woidd 
extirpate Slavery from Louisiana and Texas. It is plain 
America cannot long hold these two contradictions in the 
national consciousness. Equilibrium must come. 

Now there are three possible ways of setthng the quarrel 
between these two Ideas; only tlu-ee. The categories are 
exhaustive. 

This is the first : The discord may rend the nation asunder, 
and the two elements separate and become distinct nations — 
a Despotism with the Idea of Slavery, a Democracy with the 
Idea of Freedom. Then each will be an equilibrious figure. 
The Anglo-Saxon Despotism may go to ruin on its own 
account, while the Anglo-Saxon Democracy marches on to 
national welfare. That is the first hypothesis. 



33 



Or, second : The Idea of Freedom may destroy Slaveiy, with ' 
all its accidents — attendant and consequent. Then the na- 
tion may have unity of idea, and so a unity of action, and 
become a harmonious whole, a great industrial Democracy, 
re-enacting the laws of God, and pursuing its way, continu- 
ally attaining greater degrees of freedom and prosj)erity. 
That is the second hypothesis. 

Here is the third : The Idea of Slavery may destroy Free-^ 
dom, with all its accidents — attendant and consequent. 
Then the nation will become an integer ; only it will be a 
unit of despotism. This involves, of course, the destructive 
revolution of all our liberal institutions, state as well as 
national. Democracy must go down ; the free press go 
down ; the free church go down ; the free school go down. 
There must be an industrial despotism, which will soon 
become a military despotism. Popular legislation must 
end ; the Federal Congress will be a club of officials, like 
Nero's senate, which voted his horse first consul. The State 
legislature will be a knot of commissioners, tide-waiters, 
postmasters, district-attorneys, deputy-marshals. The town- 
meeting will be a gang of government officers, like the 
" Marshal's Guard," revolvers in their pockets, soldiers at 
their back. The Habeas Corpus will be at an end ; trial by 
jury never heard of, and open courts as common in America 
as in Spain or Rome. Commissioners Curtis, Loring, and 
Kane, will not be exceptional men ; there will be no other 
"judges;" all courts, courts of the kidnapper; all process 
summary ; all cases decided by the will of the government ; 
arbitrary force the only rule. The constable will disappear, 
the soldier come forth. All newspapers will be like the 
'^ Satanic press " of Boston and New York, like the Journal 
of St. Petersburg or the Diario Pomano, which tell lies when 
the ruler commands, or tell truth when he insists upon it. ^ 
Then the wicked will walk on every side, for the vilest of men 
will be exalted, and America become the mock and scorn 
and hissing of the nations will £ro down to worse shame than ^ 



34 



was ever heaped upon Sodom ; for "svith her hist for Aveahh, 
land, and power, she also will have committed the crime 
against nature. Then America will be another Italy, Greece, 
Asia Minor, yea, like Gomorrah — for the Dead Sea will 
have settled down upon us with nothing living in its breast, 
and the rulers will proclaim Peace where they have made 
sohtude. 

Which of these thi-ee hypotheses shall we take ? 

I. Will there be a Separation of the two elements, and a 
formation of two distinct States, — Freedom with Democracy, 
and Slavery with a tendency to despotism ? That may save 
one half the nation, and leave the other to voluntary ruin. 
Certainly it is better to enter into life halt or maimed, rather 
than having two hands and two feet to be cast into everlast- 
ing fire. 

Now, I do not suppose it is possible for the Anglo-Saxons 
of America to remain as one nation for a great many years. 
Suppose we become harmonious and prosper abundantly : 
when there are a hundred millions on the Atlantic slope, 
another hundred millions in the Mississippi Valley, another 
hundi-ed millions on the Pacific slope, and a fou.rth hundred 
millions in South America, — it is not likely that all these 
will hold together. We shall be too wide-spread. And, 
besides, it is not according to the disposition of the Teutonic 
family to aggregate into one great state any very large body 
of men ; division, not conglomeration, is after the ethnologic 
instinct and the historical custom of the Teutonic family, and 
especially of its Anglo-Saxon tribe. We do not hke central- 
ization of power, but have such strong individuality that we 
prefer local self-government ; we are social, not gregarious 
like the Celtic family. I, therefore, do not look on the union 
of the States as a thing that is likely to last a great length of 
time, under any circumstances. I doubt if any part of the 
nation will desire it a hundred years hence. 
/ True, there are causes wliich tend to keep us united : com- 



35 



inunity of ethnologic origin — fifteen millions are Anglo-Sax- " 
on ; — unity of language, literature, religion ; historic and legal 
traditions, and commercial interest. But all these may easily 
be overcome, and doubtless will be. So a dissolution of the 
great Anglo-Saxon State seems likely to take place, when the 
territory is spread so wide that there is a practical inconve- 
nience in balancing the nation on a single governmental 
point ; when the numbers are so great that we require many 
centres of legislative and administrative action in order to 
secure individual freedom of the parts as well as national 
unity of the whole ; or when the Federal Government shall 
become so corrupt that the trunk will not sustain the limbs. 
Then the branches which make up this great American Ban- 
yan tree will separate from the rotten primeval trunk, draw 
their support from their own local roots, and spread into 
great and independent trees. All this may take place without 
fighting. Massachusetts and Maine were once a single State ; 
now, friendly sisters. 

But I do not think this " dissolution of the Union " will ' 
take place immediately, or very soon. For America is not 
ruled — as it is commonly thought, — either by the mass of 
men who follow their national, ethnological, and human in- 
stincts ; or by a few far-sighted men of genius for politics, 
who consciously obey the Law of God made clear in their 
own masterly mind and conscience, and make statutes in 
advance of the calculation or even the instincts of the people, 
and so manage the Ship of State that every occasional tack is 
on a great circle of the Universe, a right line of Justice, and 
therefore the shortest way to welfare : but by two very differ- 
ent classes of men ; — by Mercantile men, who covet money, 
actual or expectant Capitalists ; and Political men, who want 
power, actual or expectant office-holders. These appear 
diverse ; but there is a strong unanimity between the two ; — 
for the mercantile men want money as a means of power, and 
the political men power as a means of money. There are 
noble men in both classes, exceptional, not instantial, men 



36 



with great riches even, and great office. But as a class, these 
men are not above the average morahty of the people, often 
below it ; they have no deep, religious faith, which leads 
them to trust the Higher Law of God. They do not look 
for Princi]3les that are right, conformable to the Constitution 
of the Universe, and so creative of the nation's permanent 
welfare ; but only for exjiedient Measures, productive to 
themselves of selfish money or selfish power. In general, they 
have the character of adventurers, the aims of adventurers, 
the morals of adventurers ; they begin poor, and of course 
obscure, and are then " democratic," and hurrah for the 
people : " Down with the powerful and the rich " is the 
private maxim of their heart. If they are successful and 
become rich, famous, attaining high office, they commonly 
despise the people : " Down'with the people ! " is the axiom 
of their heart — only they dare not say it ; for there are 
others with the same selfishness, who have not yet achieved 
their end, and raise the opposite cry. The line of the na- 
tion's course is a resultant of the compound selfishness of 
these two classes. 

From these two, with mercantile and political selfishness, 
we are to expect no comprehensive Morality, which will secure 
the Rights of mankind ; no comprehensive Policy, which will 
secure ex^^edient measures for a long time. Both will unite 
in what serves their apparent interest, brings money to the 
trader, power to the politician, — whatever be the consequence 
to the country. 

As things now are, the Union favors the schemes of both 
of these classes of men ; the politician gets power, the trader 
makes money. 

If the Union were to be dissolved and a great Northern 
Commonwealth were to be organized, with the Idea of Free- 
dom, three-quarters of the Politicians, Federal and State, 
would pass into contempt and oblivion ; all that class of 
Northern demagogues who scoff at God's Law, such as filled 
the offices of the late Whig administration in its day of power. 



37 



or as fill the offices of tlie Democratic administration to-day -^ 
they would di'op down so deep that no plummet would ever ^ 
reach them ; you would never hear of them again. 

Gratitude is not a very common virtue ; but gratitude to 
the hand of Slavery, which feeds these creatures, is their sole 
and single moral excellence ; they have that form of gratitude. / ' 
When the hand of Slavery is cut off, that class of men will 
die, just as caterpillars die when, some day in May, the 
farmer cuts off from the old tree a great branch to graft in a 
better fruit. The caterpillars will not vote for the grafting* 
That class of men will go for the Union while it serves them. 

Look at the other class. Property is safe in America : and 
why ? Because we have aimed to establish a government on 
natural rights, and property is a natural right ; say oligarchic 
Blackstone and socialistic Proudhon what they may, property 
is not the mere creature of compact, or the child of robbery ; 
it is founded in the Nature of Man. It has a very great and 
important function to perform. Nowhere in the world is it 
so much respected as here. 

But there is one kind of property wliich is not safe just 
now : — Property in Men. It is the only kind of property ■ 
which is purely the creature of violence and law ; it has no y 
root in itself. 

Now, the Union protects that "property." There are three 
hundred thousand Slaveholders, owning thirteen hundred 
millions of dollars invested in men. Their wealth depends ^ 
on the Union; destroy that, and their- tmnatural property 
will take to itself legs and run off, seeking liberty by flight, 
or else stay at home and, like an Anglo^axon, take to itself 
firebrands and swords, and burn down the master's house and 
cut the master's throat. So the Slaveholder wants the ^' 
Union ; he makes money by it. Slavery is unprofitable to / 
the nation. No three millions earn so little as the three 
million Slaves. It is costly to every State. But it enriches y 
the owner of the Slaves. The South is agricultural ; that is 
all. She raises cotton, sugar, and corn ; she has no commerce, 



no inanuflictures, no mining. The North has mills, sliips^ 
mines, manufactures ; buys and sells for the South, and makes 
money by what impoverishes the South. So all the great 
commercial centres of the North are in favor of Union, in 
fiivor of Slavery. The instinct of American trade just now is 
hostile to American Freedom. The Money Power and the 
Slave Power go hand in hand. Of course such editors and 
ministers as are only the tools of the INIoney Power, or the 
Slave Power, will be fond of " Union at all hazards." They 
will sell their mothers to keep it. Now these are the con- 
trolling classes of men ; these ministers and editors are the 
mouth-pieces of these controlling classes of men ; and as these 
classes make money and power out of the Union, for the 
present I think the Union will hold together. Yet I knoAV 

■"' very well that there are causes now at work which embitter 
the minds of men, and which, if much enforced, will so 
exasperate the North that we shall rend the Union asunder 
at a blow. That I think not likely to take place, for the 

• South sees the peril and its own ruin. 

II. The next hypothesis is, Freedom may triumph over 
^ Slavery. That was the expectation once, at the time of the 

Declaration of Independence ; nay, at the formation of the 
Constitution. But only two national steps have been taken 
against Slavery since then — one the Ordinance of 1787, the 
other the abolition of the African Slave Trade ; really that was 
done in 1788, formally twenty years after. In the individual 
States, the white man's freedom enlarges every year ; but the 
Federal Government becomes more and more addicted to 
Slavery. That hypothesis does not seem very likely to be 
adopted. 

III. Shall Slavery destroy Freedom ? It looks very much 
/ like it. Here are nine great steps, openly taken since '87, in 

favor of Slavery. First, America put Slavery into the Con- 
stitution, Second, out of old soil she made four new Slave 



States. Third, America, iu 1793, adopted Slavery as a Fed- 
eral institution, and guaranteed her protection for that kind of 
property as for no other. Fourth, America bought Louisiana 
in 1803, and put Slavery into it. Fifth, she made INlissouri 
a Slave State, and then Arkansas. Sixth, she made Slavery 
perpetual in Florida. Seventh, she annexed Texas. Eighth, 
she fought the Mexican War, and plundered a feeble sister 
republic of California, Utah, and New Mexico, to get more 
Slave Soil. Ninth, America passed the Fugitive Slave Bill, 
and has since kidnapped men in New England, New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Micliigan, Wisconsin, Illi- 
nois, Indiana, in all the East, in all the West, in all the 
Middle States. All the great cities have kidnapped their own 
citizens. Professional Slavehunters are members of New 
England Churches ; kidnappers sit down at the Lord's table 
in the city of Cotton, Chauncey, and Mayhew. In this very 
year, before it is half through, America has taken two more 
steps for the destruction of freedom. The repeal of the INlis- 
souri Compromise and the enslavement of Nebraska : that is 
the tenth step. Here is the eleventh : The Mexican Treaty, 
giving away ten millions of dollars and buying a little strip of 
worthless land, solely that it may serve the cause of Slavery. 
Here are eleven great steps openly taken towards the ruin 
of liberty in America. Are these the worst ? Very far from 
it ! Yet more dangerous things have been done in secret. 

I. Slavery has corrupted the mercantile class. Almost all 
the leading merchants of the North are Pro-Slavery men. 
They hate freedom, hate your freedom and mine ! This is 
the only Christian country in which commerce is hostile to 
freedom. 

II. See the corruption of the Political Class. There are 
forty thousand officers of the Federal Government. Look at 
them in Boston, — their character is as Avell known as this 
Hall. Read their journals in this city, — do you catch a 



y 



40 



whisper of freedom in them ? Slavery has sought its menial 
servants, — men basely born, and basely bred : it has cor- 
rupted them still further, and put them in office. America, " 
like Russia, is the country for mean men to thrive in. Give 
him time and mire enough, a worm can crawl as high as an 
eagle flies. State rights are sacrificed at the North ; central- 
ization goes on with rapid strides ; State laws are trodden 
under foot. The Northern President is all for Slavery. The 
Northern Members of the Cabinet are for Slavery ; in the 
Senate, fourteen Northern Democrats were for the enslavement 
of Nebraska ; in the House of Representatives, forty-four 
Northern Democrats voted for the bill, — fourteen in the 
Senate, forty-four in the House ; fifty-eight Northern men 
voted against the conscience of the North and the Law of 
God. Only eight men out of all the South could be found 
friendly to justice and Mse to their own local idea of injus- 
tice. The present administration, with its supple tools of 
tyranny, came into office while the cry of " No Higher Law " 
was echoing through the land ! 

HI. Slavery has debauched the Press. How many lead- 
ing journals of commerce and politics in the great cities do 
you know that are friendly to Freedom and opposed to 
Slavery ? Out of the five large daily commercial papers in 
Boston, Whig or Democratic, I know of only one that has 
spoken a word for freedom this great while. The American 
newspapers are poor defenders of American liberty. Listen 
to one of them, speaking of the last kidnapping in Boston : 
" We shall need to employ the same measures of coercion as 
are necessary in monarchical countries." There is always 
some one ready to do the basest deeds. Yet there are some 
noble journals ; such as the New York Tribune and Evening 
Post. 

IV. Then our Colleges and Schools are corrupted by 
Slavery. I do not know of five colleges in all the North 



41 

wliicli publicly appear on the side of freedom. What the 
hearts of the presidents and professors are, God knows, not I. 
The great crime against humanity, practical atheism, found 
ready support in Northern colleges, in 1850 and 1851. Once, 
the common reading books of our schools were full of noble 
words. Read the school books now made by Yankee pedlers 
of literature, and what liberal ideas do you find there ? They 
are meant for the Southern market. Slavery must not be 
offended ! 

V. Slavery has corrupted the Churches ! There are twenty- / 
eight thousand Protestant clergymen in the United States. 
There are noble hearts, true and just men among them, 
who have fearlessly borne witness to the truth. I need not 
mention their names. Alas ! they are not very numerous ; I 
should not have to go over my fingers many times to count 
them all. I honor these exceptional men. Some of them 
are old, fiir older than I am ; older than my father need have 
been ; some of them are far younger than I ; nay, some of 
them younger than my children might be : — and I honor 
these men for the fearless testimony which they have borne — 
the old, the middle-aged, and the young. But they are very 
exceptional men. Is there a minister in the South who 
preaches against Slavery ? How few in all the North ! 

Look and see the condition of the Sunday Schools. In 
1853, the Episcopal Methodists had 9,438 Sunday Schools ; 
102,732 Sunday School teachers ; 525,008 scholars. There 
is not an Anti-Slavery Sunday School in the compass of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. Last year, in New York, they 
printed more than two hundred and forty railHon pages of 
Sunday School books, not a line against Slavery in them all. 
They issued, on an average, two thousand bound volumes 
every day in the year, not a line against Slavery in them. 
They printed also two thousand pamphlets every day ; there 
is not a line in them all against Slavery ; not a line showing 
6 



that it is wicked to buy and sell a man, for wliom, according, 
to the Methodist Episcopal Church, Cln-ist died. « 

The Orthodox Sunday School Union s^icnt last year $248,- 
201 ; not a cent against Slavery, our great National Sin. 
They print books by the million. Only one of them contains 
a word against Slavery ; that is Cowper's Task, which contains 
these words — my mother taught them to me when I was a 
little boy, and sat in her lap : — 

" I would not have a Slave to till my ground, 
To carry me, to fan me -vvlien I sleep, 
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth 
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earned ! " 

You all know it : if you do not, you had better learn it and 
teach it to your children. That is the only Anti-Slavery 
word they print. Once they published a book written by 
Mr. Gallaudet, which related the story, I think, of the selling 
of Joseph : at any rate, it showed that Egyptian Slavery was 
wrong. A little girl in a Sunday School in one of the South- 
ern States one day said to her teacher, " If it was wrong to 
make Joseph a Slave, why is it not wrong to make Dinah, 
and Sambo, and Chloe Slaves ? " The Sunday School teacher 
and the Church took the alarm and complained of the Sun- 
day School Union : " You are poisoning the South with 
your religion, telling the children that Slavery is wicked." 
It was a serious thing, " dissolution of the Union," " levying 
war," or at least, " misdemeanor," for aught I know. What 
do you think the Sunday School Union did ? It suppressed 
the book ! It printed one Sunday School book which 
had a line against Egyptian Slavery and then suppressed it ; 
and it cannot be had to-day ! Amid all their million books, 
there is not a line against Slavery, save what Cowper sung. 
There are five milHon Sunday School scholars in the United 
States, and there is not a Sunday School manual which has 
got a word against Slavery in it. 



43 



You all know the American Tract Society. Last year the 
American Tract Society in Boston spent ^79,983.46 ; it visited 
more than fourteen thousand families ; it distributed 3,334,920 
tracts — not a word against Slavery in them all. The Ameri- 
can Tract Society in New York last year visited 568,000 
families, containing three million persons ; it spent for home 
purposes $406,707 ; for foreign purposes |422,294 ; it 
distributed tracts in English, French, German, Dutch, Danish, 
Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Hungarian, and Welch — and 
it did not print one single line, nor Avhisper a single word 
against this great national sin of Slavery ! ■ Nay, worse : — if 
it finds English books which suit its general purpose, but 
containing matter adverse to Slavery, it strikes out all the 
Anti-Slavery matter, then prints and circulates the book. Is 
the Tract Society also managed by Jesuits from the Roman 
Church ? 

At this day, 600,000 Slaves are directly and personally 
owned by , men who are called " professing Christians," 
*' members in good fellowship " of the churches of this land ; 
80,000 owned by Presbyterians, 225,000 by Baptists, 250,000 
owned by Methodists ; — 600,000 Slaves in this land owned 
by men Avho profess themselves Christians, and in churches 
sit down to take the Lord's Supper, in the name of Christ 
and God ! There are ministers who own their fellow men — 
" bought with a price." 

Does not this look as if Slavery were to triumph over 
Freedom ? 

VI. Slavery corrupts the Judicial Class. In America, 
especially in New England, no class of men has been so 
much respected as the judges ; and for this reason : we have 
had wise, learned, excellent men for our judges ; men Avho 
reverenced the Higher Law- of God, and sought by human 
statutes to execute Justice. You all know their venerable 
names, and how reverentially we have looked up to them. 
Many of them arc dead ; some are still living, and their 



44 



hoaiy hairs are a crown of glory on a judicial life, without 
judicial blot. But of late Slavciy has put a different class of 
men on the benches of the Federal Courts — mere tools of 
the government; creatures which get their appointment as 
pay for past political service, and as pay in advance for iniquity 
not yet accomplished. You see the consequences. Note the 
zeal of the Federal Judges to execute iniquity by statute and 
destroy Liberty. See how ready they are to support the 
Fugitive Slave Bill, which tramples on the spirit of the Con- 
stitution, and its letter, too ; which outrages Justice and 
violates the most sacred principles and precepts of Christian- 
ity. Not a United States Judge, Circuit or District, has 
uttered one word against that " bill of abominations." Nay, 
hoAV greedy they are to get victims under it ! No wolf loves 
better to rend a lamb into fragments than these judges to 
kidnap a Fugitive Slave, and punish any man who dares to 
speak against it. You know what has happened in Fugitive 
Slave Bill Courts. You remember the " miraculous " rescue 
of Shadrach : the peaceable snatching of a man from the 
hands of a cowardly kidnapper was " high treason ; " it was 
"levying war." You remember the "trial " of the rescuers ! 
Judge Sprague's charge to the Grand Jury that if they thought 
the question was which they ought to obey, the law of man 
or the Law of God, then they must " Obey both ! " serve God 
and mammon, Christ and the Devil, in the same act ! You 
remember the "trial," the "ruling" of the Bench, the 
swearing on the stand, the witness coming back to alter and 
"enlarge his testimony" and have another gird at the joris- 
oner. You have not forgotten the trials before Judge Kane at 
Philadelphia, and Judge Grier at Christiana and Wilkesbarre. 

These are natural results of causes well known. You 
cannot escape a Principle. Enslave a negro, will you ? — you 
doom to bondage your own sons and daughters, by your own 
act. 

Do you forget the Union meeting in Faneuil Hall, Novem- 
ber 26, 1850, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving Day ? It 



45 



was called to endorse the Fugitive Slave Bill — a meeting to 
promote the stealing, of men in Boston, of your fellow-wor- 
shippers and my parishioners. Do you remember the Demo- 
cratic Herods and Whig Pilates, who were made friends that 
day, melted into one unity of Despotism, in order that they 
might enslave men ? They had unity of idea and unity of 
action, that day. Do you remember the speeches of Mr. 
Curtis and Mr. Hallett ; their yelp against the unalienable 
rights of men ; their howl at God's Higher Law ? The 
worser half of that platform is now the United States Court ; 
^ — the Fugitive Slave Bill Judge, the United States Attorney. 
They got their offices for their political services past and for 
their character — very fit reward to very fitting men ! A 
man professes a fondness for kidnapping, hurrahs for it in 
Faneuil Hall : — give him the United States Judgeship ; 
make him United States Attorney — - fit to fit ! When Slavery 
dispenses offices, every service rendered to despotism is well 
paid. Men with foreheads of brass, with iron elbows, with 
consciences of gum elastic, whose chief commandment of their 
Law their Prophets and their Gospel, is to 

*' crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, 

"Where thrift may follow fawning," 

verily they shall have their reward ! They shall become 
Fugitive Slave Bill Judges ; yea. Attorneys of the United 
States ! 

In 1836, a poor Slave-girl named Med, who had been 
brought from Louisiana to Boston by her master, sued for 
her freedom in the Courts of Massachusetts. Mr. Benjamin 
R. Curtis appeared as the Slavehunter's counsel, long, and 
stoutly, and learnedly contending that she should not receive 
her freedom by the laws, constitution, and usages of this 
Commonwealth, but should be sent back to eternal bondage.* 

* The girl was set free, and the principle laid down that Slaves coming to 
a free State with the consent of their masters, secured their freedom. An 



46 



On tlie Tth of March, 1850, Mr. "Webster made his Speech 
against freedom, so fatal to hunself, but soon after found 
such a fire in his rear that he must return to Massachusetts 
to rescue his own popularity — then apparently in great peril. 
On the 29th of April, the same Mr. Curtis, faithful to his 
proclivities to\yards Slavery, made a public address to the 
apostate Senator, at the Revere House, and expressed his 
" abounding gratitude for the ability and fidelity " which 
Mr. Webster had " brought to the defence of the Constitu- 
tion and the Union," praising him as " eminently vigilant, 
wise, and faithful to our country, without shadow of turn- 
ing." At the Union meeting in Faneuil Hall, (Nov. 26th,) 
Mr. Curtis declared the fugitive Slaves " a class of foreigners," 
" with whose rights Massachusetts has nothing to do. It is 
enough for us that they have no right to be here." Other 
services, similar or analogous, which he has rendered to the 
cause of inhumanity, I here pass by. 

This is a world in which " men do nothing for nothing ; " 
the workman is worthy of his hire ; in due time Mr. Curtis 
received his reward. 

He has lately (June 7th) '' charged " the Grand Jury of 
the Circuit Court of the United States, pointing out their 
duty in respect to recent events jn Boston. A federal enact- 
ment of 1790 provides that if any person shall wilfully 
obstruct, resist, or oppose any officer of the United States in 
executing any legal writ or process thereof, he shall be im- 
prisoned not more than twelve months, and fined not more 
than three hundred dollar. . Mr. Curtis charges that the 

account of the case was published in the BostoJt Daily Advertiser of August 
29, 1836, and introduced with the following editorial comment : — " In some 
of the States there is, we believe, legislative provision for cases of this sort, 
[namely, allowing the master to bring and keep Slaves in bondage,] and it 
would seem that some such provision is necessary in this State, unless we 
would prohibit citizens of the Slaveholding States from travelling in this 
State with their families, and unless we would permit such of them as wish 
to emancipate their Slaves, to throw them at their pleasure upon the people 
of this State." 



47 



offence is a misdemeanor ; to constitute the crime it is " not 
necessary to prove the accused used or even threatened active 
violence." " If a multitude of persons should assemhle, even 
in a public highway, with the design to stand together and 
thus prevent the officer from passing freely along the way, 
. . . this would of itself, and without any active violence, be 
such an obstruction as is contemplated by this law." 

So much for what constitutes the crime. Now see who are 
criminals : " All who are present and actually obstruct, resist, 
or oppose, are of course guilty. So are all who are present, 
leagued in the common design, and so situated as to be able, 
in case of need, to afford assistance to those actually engaged, 
though they do not actually obstruct, resist, or oppose." 
That is, they are guilty of a misdemeanor, because they are in 
the neighborhood of such as oppose a constable of the United 
States, and are " able " " to afford assistance." " If they are 
present for the purpose of affording assistance, though no 
overt act is done by them, they are still guilty under tliis 
law." They are guilty of a misdemeanor, not merely as 
accessory before the fact, but as principals, for " in misde- 
meanors all are principals." 

" Not only those who are present, but those who though 
absent when the offence was committed, did procure, counsel, 
command, or abet others to commit the offence, are indictable 
as principals." But what amounts to such counselling as 
constitutes a misdemeanor? "Evincing an express liking, 
approbation, or assent to another's criminal design." " It need 
not appear that the precise time, or place, or means advised, 
were used." So all who evinced an express liking, approba- 
tion, or assent to the rescue of Mr. Burns are guilty of a 
misdemeanor ; if they " evinced an express liking " that he 
should be rescued by a miracle wrought by Almighty God, — 
and some did express "approbation" of that "means," — they 
are indictable, guilty of a "misdemeanor;" "it need not 
appear that the precise time, or place, or means advised, were 
used " ! If any colored woman, during the wicked week — 



48 



which, was ten days long — prayed that God woukl deliver 
Anthony, as it is said his angel delivered Peter, or said 
" amen " to such a prayer, she was " guilty of a misde- 
meanor ; " to be indicted as a "principal." 

So every man in Boston who, on that bad Friday, stood in 
the streets of Boston between Court Square and T "Wharf, 
was "guilty of a misdemeanor," liable to a fine of three 
hundred dollars, and to jailing for twelve months. All who 
at Faneuil Hall stirred up the minds of the people in opposi- 
tion to the Fugitive Slave Bill ; all who shouted, who clapped 
their hands at the words or the countenance of then- favorites, 
or who expressed " approbation " by a whisper of " assent," 
are "guilty of misdemeanor." The very Avomen who stood 
for four days at the street corners, and hissed the infamous 
Slavehunters and their coadjutors ; they, too, ought to be 
punished by fine of three hundred dollars and imprisonment 
for a year ! Well, there were fifteen thousand persons " as- 
sembled " " in the highway " of the City of Boston that day 
opposed to kidnapping ; half the newspapers in the country 
towns of Massachusetts "evinced an express liking" for 
freedom, and opposed the kidnapijing ; they are all " guilty 
of a misdemeanor ; " they are " Principals." Nay, the ministers 
all over the State, who preached that kidnapping was a sin ; 
those who read brave words out of the Old Testament or the 
New ; those who prayed that the victim might escape ; they, 
likewise, were " guilty of a misdemeanor," liable to be fined 
tlu-ee hundred dollars and jailed for twelve months. Excel- 
lent Fugitive Slave Bill Judge ! Mr. Webster did wisely in 
making that appointment ! He chose an approjDriate tool. 
The charge was worthy of the worst days of Jefii-eys and 
the second James ! 

We all know against whom this judicial iniquity was 
directed — against men who, at Faneuil Hall, under the 
pictured and sculptured eyes of John Hancock and the three 
Adamses, appealed to the spirit of humanity, not yet crushed 
out of your heart and mine, and lifted up their voices in 



49 



favor of Freedom and the Eternal Law of God. If lie liad 
called us by our names, he could not have made the thing- 
plainer. You know the zeal of the United States Attorney, 
you have heard of the swearing before the Grand Jury and at 
the Grand Juiy. Did the Judge's lightning only gloAv with 
judicial ardor and zeal for the Fugitive Slave Bill? — or was 
it also red with personal malignity and family spite ? Judge 
you ! 

But, alas ! there was a Grand Jury, and the Salmonean 
thunder of the Fugitive Slave Bill Judge fell harmless — 
quenched, conquered, disgraced, and brutal, — to the ground. 
Poor Fugitive Slave Bill Court ! it can only gnash its teeth 
against freedom of speech in Faneuil Hall ; only bark and 
yelp against the unalienable rights of man, and howl against 
the Higher Law of God ! it cannot bite ! Poor, imbecile, 
malignant Court ! What a pity that the Fugitive Slave Bill 
Judge was not himself the Grand Jury, to order the indict- 
ment ! what a shame that the Attorney was not a petty jury 
to convict ! Then New England, like Old, might have had 
her " bloody assizes," and Boston streets might have streamed 
with the heart's gore of noble men and women ; and human 
heads might have decked the pinnacles all around the town ; 
and Judge Curtis and Attorney Hallett might have had their 
place with Judge Jeifreys and John Boilman of old. What 
a pity that we have a Grand Jury and a traverse jury to stand 
between the malignant arm of the Slavehunter and the heart 
of you and me ! Perhaps the Court will try again, and find 
a more pliant Grand Jury, easier to intimidate. Let me sug- 
gest to the Court that the next time it should pack its Jury 
from the Marshal's "guard." Then there will be unity 
of Idea; of action, too— the Court a figure of equilibrium. 
At a Fugitive Slave Bill meeting in Faneuil Hall, it is 
easy to ask a minister a question designed to be insulting, 
and not dare listen to the proffered reply ; easy to bark at 
Justice, and howl at the unalienable rights of man ; easy to 
denounce the vengeance of a corrupt administration of Slave- 
7 



50 



hunters upon all who love the Higher Law of God ; but He 
Himself has so fashioned the hearts of men that we instinct- 
ively hate all tyranny, all oppression, all wrong ; and the 
hand of history brands ineffaceable disgrace on the brass fore- 
heads of all such -as enact iniquity by statute, and execute 
wickedness as law. The memory of the wicked shall rot. 
Scroggs and Jeffreys also got their appointment as pay for 
then- service and their character — fitting bloodhounds for a 
fitting king. For two hundred years, their names have been 
a stench in the face of the Anglo-Saxon tribe. Others as 
unscrupulous may take wai-ning by their fate. 
Thus has Slavery debauched the Federal Courts. 

VII. Alas me ! Slavery has not ended yet its long career 
of sin. Its corruption is seven-fold. It debauches the 
elected officers of our City, and even our State. In the Sims 
time of 1851, the laws of Massachusetts were violated nine 
days running, and the Free Soil Governor sat in the State House 
as idle as a feather in his chair. In the wicked week of 1854, 
the Whig Governor sat in the seat of his predecessor ! 
Massachusetts was one of the inferior counties of Virginia, 
and a Slavehunter had eminent domain over the birth-place 
of Franklin and the bm-ial-place of Hancock. Nay, against 
our own laws the Free Soil Mayor put the neck of Boston in 
the hands of a "train-band cajjtain" — the people "wonder- 
ing much to see how he did ride " ! Boston was a suburb 
of Alexandria ; the Mayor a Slave-catcher for our masters at 
the South ! You and I were only fellow Slaves ! 

All this looks as if Slavery was to triumph over Freedom. 
But even this is not the end. Slavery has privately emptied 
her seven vials of wrath upon the nation — committing seven 
debaucheries of human safeguards of our Natm-al Rights. 
That is not enough — there are other seven to come. This 
Apocalyptic Dragon, grown black with long-continued deeds 
of shame and death, now meditates five further steps of 



51 



crime. Here is the programme of the next attempt — a 
new political Tragedy in five acts. 

I. — The acquisition of Dominica — and then all Hayti — 
as new Slave Territory. 

II. — The acquisition of Cuba, by purchase, or else by 
private filibustering and public war, — as new Slave Terri- 
tory. 

III.— The reestablishment of Slavery in all the Free States, 
by Judicial " decision " or legislative enactment. Then the 
Master of the North may " sit down with his Slaves at the 
foot of Bunker Hill Monument ! " 

IV. — The restoration of the African Slave Trade, which is 
already seriously proposed and defended in the Southern 
Journals. Nay, the Senate Committee on Foreign Eelations 
recommend the first step towards it — the Avithdrawal of our 
fleet from the coast of Africa. You cannot escape the conse- 
quence of your first principle : if Slavery is right, then the 
Slave-trade is right ; the traffic between Guinea and New 
Orleans is no worse than between Virginia and New Orleans ; 
it is no worse to kidnap in Timbuctoo than in Boston. 

V. — A yet further quarrel must be sought with Mexico, 
and more Slave Territory be stolen from her. 

Who shall oppose this five-fold wickedness ? The Fugi- 
tive Slave Bill Party ; — the Nebraska Enslavement Party ? 
Northern serviHty has hitherto been ready to grant more than 
Southern arrogance dared to demand ! 

All this looks as if the third hypothesis would be fulfilled, 
and Slavery triumjih over Freedom ; as if the nation would 
expunge the Declaration of Independence from the scroll of 
time, and instead of honoring Hancock and the Adamses 
and Washington, do homage to Kane and Grier and Curtis 
and Hallett and Loring. Then the preamble to our Consti- 
tution might read — " to establish injustice, ensure domestic 
strife, liinder the common defence, disturb the general wel- 



52 



fare, and inflict the curse of Londagc on ourselves and our 
posterity." Then we shall honor the Puritans no more, but 
their Prelatical tormentors ; nor reverence the great Re- 
formers, only the Inquisitors of Rome. Yea, we may tear 
the name of Jesus out of the American Bible ,• yea, God's 
name ; v/orship the Devil at our Lord's table, Iscariot for 
Redeemer ! 

See the steady triumph of Despotism ! Ten years more 
like the ten years past, and it will be all over with the liber- 
ties of America. Everything must go down, and the heel of 
the tyrant will be on our neck. It will be all over with the 
Rights of Man in America, and you and I must go to Austria, 
to Italy, or to Siberia for our freedom ; or perish with the 
liberty which our fathers fought for and secured to them- 
selves, not to their faithless sons. Shall America thus 
miserably perish ? Such is the aspect of things to-day ! 

But are the people alarmed ? No, they fear nothing ; only 
the tightness in the money market ! Next Tuesday at sun- 
rise every bell in Boston will ring joyously ; every cannon 
will belch sulphurous "Welcome fi-om its brazen tlii-oat. 
There will be processions, — the Mayor and the Aldermen 
and the Marshal and the Naval Officer, and, I suppose, the 
" Marshal's Guard," very appropriately taking their places. 
There is a chain on the Common to-day : it is the same chain 
that was around the Court House in 1851 ; it is the chain that 
, bound Sims ; now it is a festal chain. Beware the chain ! it 
is of the Father of Lies ! There are mottoes about the Com- 
mon — " They mutually pledged to each other their lives, 
their fortunes, and their sacred honor." I suppose it means 
that the mayor and the kidnappers did this. " The spirit of 
'76 still lives." Lives, I suppose, in the Supreme Court of 
Fugitive Slave Bill judges. " Washington, Jefferson, and 
their compatriots ! — their names are sacred in the heart of 
every American." That, I suppose, is the opinion of Thomas 
Sims and of Anthony Burns. And opposite the great Park 
Street Church, — where a noble man is this day, I trust, dis- 



53 



coursing noble words, for he has never yet been found false to 
freedom — " Liberty and Independence, our Fathers' Legacy ! 
— God forbid that we their sons should prove recreant to the 
trust ! " It ought to read, " God forgive us that we their 
sons have proved so recreant to the trust ! " So they will 
celebrate the Fourth of July, and call it " Independence 
Day ! " The foolish press of France, bought and beaten and 
trodden on by Napoleon the Little, is full of talk about the 
welfare of the " Great Nation ! " Philip of INIacedon was 
conquering the Athenian allies toAvn by town ; he destroyed 
and swept off two-and-thirty cities, selling their children as 
Slaves. All the Cassandrian eloquence of Demosthenes could 
not rouse degenerate Athens from her idle sleep. She also 
fell — the fairest of all free States ; corrupted first — forgetful 
of God's Higher Law. Shall America thus perish, all im- 
mature ! 

So was it in the days of old : they ate, they drank, they 
planted, they builded, they married, they Avere given in mar- 
riage, until the day that Noah entered into the Ark, and the 
Flood came and devoured them all ! 

Well, is this to be the end ? Was it for this the Pilgrims 
came over the sea? Does Forefathers' Kock assent to it? 
Was it for this that the New England clergy prayed, and their 
prayers became the law of the land for a hundi-ed years ? 
Was it for this that Cotton planted in Boston a little branch 
of the Lord's vine, and Roger Williams and Higginson — he 
still lives in an undegenerate son — did the same in the city 
which they called of Peace, Salem ? Was it for this that 
Eliot carried the Gospel to the Indians ? that Chauncey 
and Edwards and Hopkins and Mayhew and Channing and 
Ware labored and prayed ? for this that our fathers fought — 
the Adamses, Wasliington, Hancock ? for this that there was 
an eight-years' war, and a thousand battle fields ? for this the 
little monuments at Acton, Concord, Lexington, West Cam- 
bridge, Danvers, and the great one over there on the spot 



54 



which our fathers' blood made so red ? Shall America 
become Asia Minor ? New England, Italy ? Boston such as 
Athens — dead and rotten ? Yes ! if we do not mend, and 
speedily mend. Ten years more, and the Liberty of America 
is all gone. We shall fall -^ the laugh, the by-word, the 
proverb, the scorn, the mock of the nations, who shall cry 
against us. Hell from beneath shall be moved to meet us at 
our coming, and in derision shall it welcome us ; 

" The heir of all the ages, and the youngest born of time." 

We shall lie down mth the unrepentant prodigals of old 
time, damned to everlasting infamy and shame ! 

Would you have it so ? Shall it be ? 

To-day, America is a debauched young man, of good blood, 
fortune, and family, but the companion of gamesters and 
brawlers ; reeking with wine ; wasting his substance in riot- 
ous living ; in the lap of harlots squandering the life which 
his mother gave him. Shall he return ? Shall he perish ? 
One day may determine. 

Shall America thus die ? I look to the past, — Asia, 
Africa, Europe, and they answer, " Yes ! " Where is the 
Hebrew Commonwealth ; the Roman Eepublic ; where is 
liberal Greece, — Athens and many a far-famed Ionian town ; 
where are the Commonwealths of Mediaeval Italy ; the Teu- 
tonic free cities — German, Dutch, or Swiss ? They have all 
perished. Not one of them is left. Parian Statues of Liberty, 
sorely mutilated, still remain ; but the Parian rock whence 
Liberty once hewed her sculptures out — it is all gone. 
Shall America thus perish ? Greece and Italy both answer 
" Yes ! " I question the last fifty years of American history, 
and it says, " Yes." I look to the American pulpit, I ask 
the five million Svmday School scholars, and they say " Yes." 
I ask the Federal Court, the Democratic Party, and the 
Whig, and the answer is still the same. 



55 



But I close my eyes on the eleven past missteps we have 
taken for Slavery ; on that seven-fold clandestine corruption ; 
I forget the Whig party ; I forget the present Administra- 
tion ; I forget the Judges of the Courts ; — I remember the 
few noblest men that there are in society. Church and State ; 
I remember the grave of my father, the lessons of my mother's 
life ; I look to the Spirit of this Age, — it is the nineteenth 
century, not the ninth ; — I look to the history of the Anglo- 
Saxons in America, and the history of Mankind ; I remember 
the story and the song of Italian and German Patriots ; I 
recall the dear words of those great-minded Greeks — Ionian, 
Dorian, iEtolian ; I remember the Romans who spoke and 
sang and fought for truth and right ; I recollect those old 
Hebrew Prophets, earth's nobler sons. Poets and Saints ; I 
call to mind the greatest, noblest, purest soul that ever blos- 
somed in this dusty world ; — and I say, " No ! " Truth 
shall triumph. Justice shall be law ! And if America fail, 
though she is one-fortieth of God's family, and it is a great 
loss, there are other nations behind us; our Truth shall not" 
perish, even if we go down. But we shall not fail ! 

I look into your eyes — young men and women, thousands 
of you, and men and women far enough from young ! I look 
into the eyes of fifty thousand other men and Avomen, whom, 
in the last eight months, I have spoken to, face to face, and 
they say, " No ! America shall not fail ! " 

I remember the women, who were never found fliithless 
when a sacrifice was to be offered to great princix^les ; I look 
up to my God, and I look into my own heart, and I say. 
We shaU not fail ! We shall not fail ! 

This, at my side, it is the willow ; it is the symbol of 
weeping : — but its leaves are deciduous ; the autumn wind 
will strew them on the ground ; and beneath, here is a 
perennial plant ; it is green all the year through. When this 
willow branch is leafless, the other is green with hoj)e, and 
its buds are in its bosom ; its buds will blossom. So it is 
with America. 



LfffC. 



56 



Did our fathers live ? are we dead ? Even in our ashes 
live their holy fires ! Boston only sleeps ; one day she will 
wake ! Massachusetts will stir again ! New England will 
rise and walk! the vanished North be found once more, 
queenly and majestic ! Then it will be seen that Slavery is 
weak and powerless in itself, only a phantom of the night. 

Slaveiy is a " Finality," is it ? There shall be no " Agi- 
tation," — not the least, — shall there ? There is a Hispaniola 
in the South, and the South knows it. She sits on a powder- 
magazine, and then plays with fire, while Humanity shoots 
rockets all over the world. To mutilate, to torture, to burn 
to death revolted Africans whom outrage has stung to crime 
— that is only to light the torches of San Domingo. This 
Black Bondage will be Eed Freedom, one day ; nay. Lust, 
Vengeance, redder yet. I would not wait till that Flood 
comes and devom-s all. 

"When the North stands up, manfully, united, we can tear 
down Slavery in a single twelve-month; and when wc do 
unite, it must not be only to destroy Slavery in the territories, 
but to uproot every fragment of Slavery throughout this 
whole wide land. Then leanness will depart from our soids ; 
then the blessing of God will come upon us ; we shall 
have a Commonwealth based on righteousness, wliich is the 
strength of any people, and shall stand longer than ^gypt, — 
National Fidelity to God our age-outlasting Pyramid ! 

How feeble seems a single nation ,* how powerless a solitary 
man ! But one of a family of forty, we can do much. How 
much is Italy, Rome, Greece, Palestine, ^gypt to the world .'' 
The solitary man — a Luther, a Paul, a Jesus — he out- 
weighs millions of coward souls ! Each one of you take 
heed that the Republic receive no harm ! 



W46 




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